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Did Apple Do The Right Thing in Moving To Intel From PowerPC???

Did Apple Make The Right Move In Switching To Intel?

  • Yes

    Votes: 498 81.9%

  • No

    Votes: 66 10.9%

  • Don't know

    Votes: 44 7.2%
  • Total voters
    608
  • Poll closed .
ezekielrage_99 said:
I still think people are missing the point, POWER6 CPus are for high end servers and workstations Apple at the moment does not cater for this market yet.
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Seriously. This is like when they released the 80 core intel had created. Its like are you now going to complain that your brand new mac pro has 10% the cores of what it should. Even though it has 800% as many as what most do? I really think some perspective should be put on this and this isn't news. IBM makes new chips costing more than double the price for the most expensive Intel chip. Who wants one!

I .... DO NOT!
 
Universal Binaries are Temporary

MacsRgr8 said:
I'm pretty sure getting the UB of Leopard Server on this baby will be peanuts, and Apple will suddenly, but finally enter the mid-high range Server market.

This will also ensure Apple staying UNIVERSAL with Mac OS X (and not x86 only in furture realses), keeping all options open.
Click to expand...

Rest assured that most of the application vendors are counting the days until they can drop UB and produce Intel-only binaries.

It would be a bad thing for the platform for Apple to produce PPC and Intel systems side-by-side. The ISVs don't want that.

We're already seeing major new apps that are Intel only. This trend will continue and accelerate.

When 10.5 comes out with its rumoured true 64-bit support, don't be surprised when many of the new 64-bit applications are for Intel 64-bit only.
 
richieroo said:
...but so long as Apple carry on developing for both PPC and Intel achitectures then they have the choice, if they wish to switch back? Admittedly they will have to refine the Power6 to be something that could slip into a nice consumer friendly machine but the option is there. Seems like a win-win situation for the Mac user.
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PPC stands for PowerPC. Power does not equal PowerPC. That are no more new PowerPC chips that I know off (last one was based on the Power4 series, but it was called the G5). Basically, Power6 cannot run OS X. PPC and x64 chips can, POwer6 is neither of those. So you can.t So there is no experimenting. No lets drop a Power6 into my new Mac Pro and watch me dominate at ripping music. No.
 
Much Ado said:
Ebony and ivory sit next to each other on my piano, so why can't an Intel Macbook and a G6 Mac Pro? :)
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You were saying ebony and ivory? I'm kinda confused, a Mac Pro is silver. And those two puppies ^ only came out with Intel Inside, so...
 

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Don't look back!

This discussion is meaningless without answering questions about price, power consumption and ready supply. You can drool all you want about the G6's raw specs but I'm under the impression that it's still designed for servers, not desktops and certainly not laptops.

Notebook computers represent a substantial portion of Apple's sales--IIRC, perhaps above 50% of computer sales. IBM just wasn't going to come out with a notebook-friendly for Apple, a company that commanded an insignificant portion of its CPU sales.

I cannot imagine that the G6 would have been available at price points relevant to mass-market PC sales. And even if the G6 was affordable do you really think that Apple would have been the first in line to get these new chips? Guess again. A lot of people also seem to forget that IBM and Motorola/Freescale weren't exactly reliable at chip delivery dates.

Let's not also forget that Intel is helping Apple with chipset and motherboard design costs. I can remember when Apple was competing with the clone companies and designing its own motherboards: it consistently lagged in bus speed, number of RAM and PCI slots, etc. Let Intel do this kind of work for Apple--it's far better at it than the lads in Cupertino.

Then we have the reduced complexity of designing software for Intel-based Macs. Vendors don't have to wrestle with writing code for Wintel machines and adapting it to PowerPC Macs.

Don't look back. The PowerPC triumvirate (Apple, IBM, Motorola) never really functioned effectively. Being stuck with a non-standard CPU architecture was a dead weight on Apple's ambitions. Thanks to the move to Intel and virtualization software, OS X can run just as much software as Windows--and a lot more securely too. These are good times for Apple.
 
There's no reason Apple couldn't use these chips in their computers (or a stripped-down version, kind of like they did with the G5.) That's why OS X is universal. I guess it's too bad for Adobe though, with all their new Intel-only apps.
 
YES, life is better with an Intel CPU

I initially thought the world was going to end when Apple announced the switch to Intel. At the time of the announcement the Intel product offering sucked (and Apple knew it) but Intel also opened up the kimono and showed Apple what was in the pipeline. I just love my Core 2 Duo iMac. I also appreciate being able to boot Vista when I need to. This would have never been possible on PowerPC technology especially after M$ aquired VPC.

We have Apple and IBM to thank for the current Intel chip architecture and performance. Had Apple and IBM not upped the ante with dual independent buses running at 1/2 the processor speed, I'm sure we would be in a Pentium 5 world with single core 4 GHz speeds and a shared bus running at 900 MHz max.

These developments from IBM are too late to have any impact. IBM made its bed with the game console industry and put all its eggs in the Cell processor basket. I wish them all the best, but would not reverse the switch.

Long live PowerPC, but welcome Intel.
 
I definitely think Apple made the right move to go to Intel. It produced a lot of hype for Apple. Apple finally has some of the fastest notebooks in the industry instead of having some of the slowest. Also, I think a ton of people are impressed that you can buy a Mac and basically have 2 computers in one, meaning you can run Mac OS X and Windows both a full speed. That alone I think has created more switchers than anything. People are now more apt to get a Mac because they don't necessarily have to worry about whether or not their Windows only apps are going to work on the Mac.

Also, the notebooks were the biggest problem for Apple with the PPC chip. They just simply weren't available and nothing was coming in the near future. Even if Apple stayed and waited for the G6 CPU to arrive, sit and think where Apple's notebooks would be up until today. They'd most likely still be using the far outdated G4 processor with the same slow FSB and low memory bandwidth, and slow frequency. There was no way in hell Apple was going to get a G5 to work in a notebook enclosure. Plus, Apple wouldn't have all of this hype of being able to run OS X and Windows. It was just a good decision.
 
electronboy said:
We have Apple and IBM to thank for the current Intel chip architecture and performance. Had Apple and IBM not upped the ante with dual independent buses running at 1/2 the processor speed, I'm sure we would be in a Pentium 5 world with single core 4 GHz speeds and a shared bus running at 900 MHz max.
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LOOL. OH MAN. IBM!?! Is that a joke? The reason Intel felt pressure was AMD. They held quadruple the market share than Apple at the time. Who are you going to feel pressure from? These quirks living off this non-standard CPU for the past decade. Or a direct competitor to your chips, but whose chips are faster, cheaper, cooler?

Yeah keep on dreaming that IBM put pressure on them.
 
The G5 was derived from the 970 chip which I believe was an alias for the Power4. In any case, the G5 was a toned down desktop variant of the PowerX chip. I doubt the Power6 would be available as a desktop CPU and we'd have some scaled down version (which would still be good). The current crop of Intel chips are very solid.
 
maxrobertson said:
There's no reason Apple couldn't use these chips in their computers (or a stripped-down version, kind of like they did with the G5.) That's why OS X is universal. I guess it's too bad for Adobe though, with all their new Intel-only apps.
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No way is Apple going to continue to develop 2 completely different platforms. The R&D costs and production costs would skyrocket. Its more than just the OS. Its all of the development of the hardware components that would make it very expensive to do. You also have the possibility of confusing customers. Thats the last thing you want to do. Imagine a customer buying a PPC Mac with the anticipation of using Windows on it as well. Its more than just a customer who didn't pay attention, its a customer that maybe didn't know the difference and or why it makes a difference.
 
sushi said:
Exactly.

The switch to Intel has been good for Apple.

Additionally, the benefit of having an Intel based MB, is that those who need it, can run Windows effectively on their Mac. In this case via Boot Camp or Parallels.
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Bingo. As insidious as it may seem to those of us who are old-school mac users the ability to also boot into Windows has sold Macs to those who previously had catagorically ignored Apple's offerings. This has resulted in stronger sales, and ultimately has created a second trojan-horse scenario. The iPod was the first trojan horse, bringing Apple's aesthetic and software chops—with both iTunes and Quicktime—to a larger audience. The Intel shift means that more users will be exposed to OSX even as they're installing Boot Camp and/or Parallels and thus find themselves using a Mac. The likelihood that a user will buy a Mac and then only run Windows is a small risk compared to the thousands of new users who are suddenly exposed to how cool OSX is and how much Apple's design sense plays into making beautiful machines.
 
Of course Apple made the right move. The Power6 would not have made it into a Mac. A modified version with less impressive specs would have become the G6. We would have a bunch of over heating Macs that wouldn't be able to keep up with PCs
 
electronboy said:
We have Apple and IBM to thank for the current Intel chip architecture and performance. Had Apple and IBM not upped the ante with dual independent buses running at 1/2 the processor speed, I'm sure we would be in a Pentium 5 world with single core 4 GHz speeds and a shared bus running at 900 MHz max.

These developments from IBM are too late to have any impact. IBM made its bed with the game console industry and put all its eggs in the Cell processor basket. I wish them all the best, but would not reverse the switch.

Long live PowerPC, but welcome Intel.
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I think Intel had the current lineup for chips in the works for quite some time. These new CPU's are very complicated processors and you don't just develop them in a year. Intel has plans for chips 5 or 6 yrs down the road from here. The Pentium 4 kind of hit a wall and they knew they had to go into a different direction instead of just increasing the frequency more and more. AMD is the who put the pressure on them. AMD started to take a good chunk away from Intel and they knew they had to get their ass in gear and start producing some real processors to compete with AMD. IBM isn't a direct competitor to Intel for desktop and notebook computers. AMD is their biggest competitor and now Intel is starting to take that chunk back now that Intel has a great lineup.
 
Butthead said:
Someone post some TDP figures for 4 or 8 core Power6's (they scale up to 16 IIRC)
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Thats just for the specific server released. Follow-on servers (at a different price point) would scale to 64 or possibly 128 cores. In fact over the next 6 months, IBM's entire UNIX range will be switch to POWER6 from POWER5+. This includes 1U, 2U, 4U, HPC and higher end servers starting form around 3-4k in price. They will also release a QCM (quad core module) POWER6 chips in several model. BTW, IBM is ditching the 970MP in their JS21 blade and will be putting in the POWER6 as well.

As for TDP:
Nothing official, but an IBM rep said that it uses between 100-160W. I am assuming 100W is max for 3.5Ghz and 160W is for 4.7Ghz, but it could be also be the range for the 4.7Ghz processor (typical to max?).

http://www.rlslog.net/ibm-announces-power6-worlds-fastest-cpu/

Considering that the POWER6 dual core outclasses the Xeon 3.0Ghz quad core (as used in MacPro) by quite a large margin (and that processor is 150W), the performance/watt isn't too bad.

Definitely not suitable on a laptop. But would crush the Xeon in the MacPro.

For reference:

A comparison of 8 core results vs Core 2 Xeon is as follows (the mac Pro 3ghz would be approx 10-12% higher than the Intel QC 2.66Ghz result for int and only marginally higher for fp because of bandwidth limitations on the platform).

8 core SPEC CPU2006 INT Rates
240 ___ IBM: 4.7Ghz POWER6
91.2 ___ Fujitsu Siemens: 2.66 GHz Intel QC Xeon processor X5355, FSB 1.333

8 core SPEC CPU2006 FP Rates
213 ___ IBM: 4.7Ghz POWER6
60.9 ___ Fujitsu Siemens: 2.66 GHz Intel QC Xeon processor X5355, FSB 1.333

Ironically, spec_rates were the benchmarks Apple chose to publish in the Intel launch to demonstrate the superiority vs the older PowerPC offerings.

As can be seen, even a 4core POWER6 would crush the 8 core Xeon. In fact, a 2 core POWER6 (58.0) almost matches the 8 core Xeon in fp.
 
Cassie said:

Ignorant? How is that ignorant? Selfish, maybe...

Sure, they can evolve. Anything can evolve. But do we really want it to? I do believe that the software and hardware we have does us pretty good. All this talk of touch-screen's and voice activated commands isn't helping me believe otherwise, because many of us prefer more "archaic" means of input.

Why would I want it to stop? I'm the kind of person who likes to keep her computers for a good 15 or 20 years before upgrading.

I do realize the pro's need more power. But once they get the amount they need, that should be the limit. Who actually needs more then they have?(Of course it's ok if you realized you need a Mac Pro after buying an iMac, thats fine.) If software development focused on utilizing what power people already have, instead of forcing them to upgrade to use the software, the answer would be next to no one.
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Oh My, now you are just sounding silly.

We need advancement in every walk of life.
We have cars & trains so now we can travel to other cities, ships & planes so we can vist other countries - what would have happened if we stayed on horses?
We have phones so we can stay in touch with our loved ones, or maybe you would prefer we still use carrier pigeons?
Thanks to todays technology I can pull a mobile phone out of my pocket & speak to anyone anywhere in the world!
I watched my favourite football team play in the European Cup final last night in my living room in England- live from Athens in Greece!!!
My car via sat nav tells me how to get to that address in Birmingham so I can pick up that item I won on eBay!
Electric guitars, Live Aid concert, Synthersizers, Cinema, TV, MRI scanners, X-Ray machines, Vinyl records, Cds, DVDs, Fridges & microwaves all made by pushing the boundaries of technology.
Go and watch Superman II (Christopher reeve) & Spiderman 2 & see the difference 30 years makes!
And how do you think the internet happened??
You know...the very thing you are writing your nonsense on right now!

None of the above would be possible if silly little girls with no imagination like you were all that lived on the planet!

Your posts just make you sound foolish.

I don't know what the future holds & that's why it's so exciting.

PS: You'd also have millions of people around the world unemployed if you stopped the development of better computers
 
Chef Medeski said:
And IBM released a Power6 processor. NOT A PowerPC. Power. Two different things.
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Yes... and again I say: As long as we see universal binaries, then I think Apple can still put PowerPC processors in macs.

Isn't my statement still true?
I didn't mention POWER6 in my post...and I didn't say POWER=PowerPC.
No need to type "NOT" in capitals. I can read it fine.
 
Of course they made the right move. IBM couldn't produce what Apple wanted and they were hot processors. Just because they produce something like this doesn't mean anything. And now we have the option to boot Windows if we ever need it. Too little too late for IBM.
 
Chef Medeski said:
Seriously. This is like when they released the 80 core intel had created. Its like are you now going to complain that your brand new mac pro has 10% the cores of what it should. Even though it has 800% as many as what most do? I really think some perspective should be put on this and this isn't news. IBM makes new chips costing more than double the price for the most expensive Intel chip. Who wants one!

I .... DO NOT!
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That was my point, it's not feasible for a consumer product to have high end professional features. A POWER6 would be great, but I only play WoW, use iTunes, use some Adobe applications and surf the net a high end CPU would be a waste or power and money.
 
Running Windows is why!

sushi said:
Exactly.

The switch to Intel has been good for Apple.

Additionally, the benefit of having an Intel based MB, is that those who need it, can run Windows effectively on their Mac. In this case via Boot Camp or Parallels.
Click to expand...


For those that want or need to run Windows, the Intel Mac is much better than the PPC Macs. Other than the Windows stuff I like my PPC Mac better. And the thing you have to compare is that I have a 3 GHz Intel Mac Pro that I am comparing to an 1.67 GHz G4 PowerBook.

I've had some long term Mac Users that are switching to Windows because they say they like the look & feel better than their Macs. And one of them started with a 128k Mac, the original 1984 model.

I would think that MS was glad to se that Steve Jobs had Apple change to the Intel processor line. I wonder who son more, Apple or MicroSoft? I still have more apps for my Mac sturff, but the MS Windows stuff is growing. Its almost like Steve was given the boost to change to Intel from MS. This seems to be more what the news is.

The Power4, Power5 & now the new Power6 has always been better than the Intel & AMD competition. IBM never went farther than the G5 a derivative of the Power4. It would be nice to see how a G6 or G7 derivative of the Power6 would run. With the much more rapidly changing Intel world before Apple changed to Intel, to the now yearly changes by Intel, maybe its the company that supplies Apple processors must be on a yearly update schedule. In 9 months the only change to the Intel Mac Pro has been the dual quad cores. The other models are still at the same place & price. Only small increases have come in other models. Apple did a minor change with the Intel MacBook while the rest of the Intel world changed processors models to a newer better model. The year is not up yet so Apple can't upgrade their Intel MacBook Pro. Until that update happens, the Intel MacBook has to stay a processor or 2 behind the Windows Intel market.

How can Apple lead when they a a processor or 2 older than their Windows competition? But we must remember that Apple has been proud of the fact that they are a trinket company now & no longer a computer company. For that reason, we should feel good when Macs are only one processor model behind the rest of the computer world. Before they could blame it on Motorola or IBM. Now the real reason may be showing itself to the light of day. Maybe it has to do with the Apple managements decision to forgo being a computer company to become the most inovative electronic trinket company of the current time.

I still love my Mac, but how much more would I love to really have a leader rather than the follower?

Bill the TaxMan
 
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